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The production committee gets only a quarter of that projected money, half if the distributor (like Pony Canyon) is sponsoring the show (= on the committee). If what they say about DVD sales is true, that they cover most production costs even with a 3000 SKU DVD sales run, then production costs need to be lower with every consecutive episode.

Finally, to what extent is the anime market driven by otaku spending? They may be the most vocal segment, but that doesn't necessarily mean they've got the biggest spending power. Also, the industry is likely to ruin itself by catering only to a niche, instead of expanding its appeal.

I'm not sure. All a casual viewer will offer is eyeballs during commercials, and maybe a few DVD rental fees or movie tickets. The otaku and the kids are the ones buying all the stuff.

so all the revenue an anime makes is from dvd sales/ merchandise? then wouldnt that mean that licensing is very very important for anime production?

Anh_Minh mentions renting, which is big in Japan, bigger than in the U.S. at least. Then there's online video sales. Of course, merchandise is the most important part, and is usually part of the copyright licensing arm. Many production committees aren't producers under companies that are toy makers among other things (like Bandai), so they sell copyrights to toy makers (like GoodSmile Company). Figures are a huge business, probably a few times larger than DVD. Regional licensing is another thing. I mean, every revenue stream is important. I don't think U.S. licensing plays that big of a role anymore. It used to when the likes of Geneon USA, ADV, Urban Vision were on the production committees themselves (I'm actually glad that didn't work out as planned), but Asia is still a big TV broadcast market. I'm sure licences for those regions are still valuable assets to copyright holders.

Case in point, Japan really knows their customers, their clients, their partners, to sell anime to them.

The problem when most of your business is made from handling of copyrights and licensing and with lots of sponsors and production committees involved is that:

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One is the lack of copyrights attributed to production agencies — copyrights are divvied up among sponsors, a system widely criticized for robbing the actual creators of any secondary-use benefits, not to mention motivation.

Another is the popular practice of commissioning and recommissioning production work to smaller agencies that often leads to shady transactions

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Ide recalled how he used to make ¥70,000 a month in his rookie years, sharing a cheap apartment to get by before being assigned to draw the more pricey key frames

And yet I don't think folks at d-Rights, MFI, Sony, Aniplex have ever had to go through that

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The study revealed that a single cel on average earns animators a meager ¥186.9. Considering how a grunt worker has to fill in 500 in-between cels per month for a television animation series, this means a monthly wage of ¥94,000 at best — for an average of 250 hours of work — until an artist gets to handle key frames or storyboards.

I don't think Shinkai, Akio Watanabe of Hoshizora Kiseki, Yasuhiro Yoshiura of Eve no Jikan, Maikaze+Zun of Touhou anime, and Takafumi Hoshikawa of Candy Boy had to "climb the ladder" in this way to do what they needed to do.
Who said you can't be involved in the storyboarding, the key frames, the in-between, the screenplay, the editing or any other part of the production at once?

we were talking about this last week (?). looks like steps are being taken in a good direction.. though i doubt actual structural problems will be taken care off anytime soon

edit:

infact there are a lot of similiar articles. I guess the companies must spring into action now - lets hope it gives us the desired result ( which of course, depends on person to person, but no one ever said this would only have one outcome)

Does Sony/Animax have access to satellite channels with footprints across Asia? The breathless press release verbiage doesn't really tell us much about how this event is being managed. If it's just buying time on a few birds at the same time, it not quite that big a technical feat. They also didn't say anything about languages; English dubs or subs? Dubs in all major languages (seems unlikely to me)? Advertiser-supported?

Seeing as it's Sony, shouldn't we be expecting to see PS3 games for these shows, too?

Does Sony/Animax have access to satellite channels with footprints across Asia? The breathless press release verbiage doesn't really tell us much about how this event is being managed. If it's just buying time on a few birds at the same time, it not quite that big a technical feat. They also didn't say anything about languages; English dubs or subs? Dubs in all major languages (seems unlikely to me)? Advertiser-supported?

Seeing as it's Sony, shouldn't we be expecting to see PS3 games for these shows, too?

I believe the reporting said it would be subbed into whatever language was in the market it was being aired in. Chinese for the chinese market and English for the singapore and phillipean market, I think?

I wasn't particularly full of details, as you pointed out, so we'll just have to see how they handle it.

The whole "first simulcast" thing is a lie anyway... Kurokami is simulcast and it came before them, and it was dubbed into 3 different languages, so I'm not sure what they are so proud of.

The problem when most of your business is made from handling of copyrights and licensing and with lots of sponsors and production committees involved is that:

And yet I don't think folks at d-Rights, MFI, Sony, Aniplex have ever had to go through that

I don't think Shinkai, Akio Watanabe of Hoshizora Kiseki, Yasuhiro Yoshiura of Eve no Jikan, Maikaze+Zun of Touhou anime, and Takafumi Hoshikawa of Candy Boy had to "climb the ladder" in this way to do what they needed to do.
Who said you can't be involved in the storyboarding, the key frames, the in-between, the screenplay, the editing or any other part of the production at once?

No, Shinkai started this after he found that there wasn't much work for a guy with a degree in Japan Language in the country so he started Hoshi no Koe on his own.

Like everything else, I think we will see more Shinkais and more alternative distrubution methods EVENTUALLY.

As for TV series, budgets are most likely going to be lower (although the quality of images has only gotten higher each decade).

The US market? That's a toughie. It's one thing to rely on the Japanese otaku market, but that is a market you can more easily bank on than the US which most likely is MUCH SMALLER PROPORTIONALLY.

Anime will need another Pokemon or DBZ sized hit here to make real gravy for the anime train internationally. However, companies aren't licencing and pushing the right stuff to hit the mainstream and even then it's considerably risky. America doesn't believe in non comedy animation for any one over the age of 19 (south park, family guy and "adult comedies" barely count).

Fortunetly, the industry isn't going to disappear niehter in the US or internationally.

The U.S. market is not small, but the individual buyer is small compared to otaku, this implies that you have to have some sort of mass market, mainstream appeal, which is a completely different business model from the one directed at otaku. Of course this really would all be solved if anime liscensing companies in the U.S. supported otaku communities or at least foster the otaku lifestyle instead of adamantly trying to adapt it to the american/western television standard.

The U.S. market is not small, but the individual buyer is small compared to otaku, this implies that you have to have some sort of mass market, mainstream appeal, which is a completely different business model from the one directed at otaku. Of course this really would all be solved if anime liscensing companies in the U.S. supported otaku communities or at least foster the otaku lifestyle instead of adamantly trying to adapt it to the american/western television standard.

I would love if they did that, but doing THAT SPECIFICALLY isn't likely to yield a highly sustainable profitable healthy industry. I mean shows like Death Note or Naruto or Bleach are one thing.

But shows like say Mai Hime or even Ghost in the Shell and Gundam are notoriosly risky and niche to deal with not to mention the expense of localizing them for potentially small profit. In order for the US market to get a shot in the arm, I don't see how you can get away from having a decent mainstream hit every 10 years.

Problem is though, the whole "OH WOAH ANIME, NEW, EXOTIC" has worn off. It's established itself as far is it will go in the kids market. Kids will watch anything, adults need HUGE prodding to look at non simpsons type animation, if they got their hands on teh right property and marketed it well,........

No, Shinkai started this after he found that there wasn't much work for a guy with a degree in Japan Language in the country so he started Hoshi no Koe on his own.

Like everything else, I think we will see more Shinkais and more alternative distrubution methods EVENTUALLY.

Hope so too. Although some people probably won't like the sprouting of otaku-catering titles this kind of direction would result in.

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As for TV series, budgets are most likely going to be lower (although the quality of images has only gotten higher each decade).

Well considering how little of the money spent and none that is subsequently made in the current system actually goes to the creators, I'd say it's still possible to have lower costs and maintain profitability.

.. runs the numbers of Nine Inch Nails's Creative Commons download experiment and discovers that it only took the band two days to exceed the typical net from a massive-selling traditional CD release. The band sold $750,000 worth of "limited edition deluxe sets," plus an unknowable further sum from sales of the regular CDs and merch.

Using the figures quoted, while an artist may nominally make $1.60 from an $15.99 MSRP CD, when NiN sells a download for their entire album for $5 they still make more money even after expenses for services, especially considering how much more sales they gain compared to the usual double or triple price point.

One thing that artists like NiN and independent artists like those http://fixtonline.com do is that they also involve the fanbase. There are remixing projects and music video projects that the fans get involved in, in addition to two way communication and feedback for in progress material. There are no hassles with copyrights since they control it!

This is much more the attitude in doujin circles than production committee circles.

The only example of such permissive usage of material I've seen from a "mainstream" producer is George Lucas, who has expressively allowed non-profit usage of his Star Wars franchise.

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Originally Posted by Toua

Welp, the news keeps getting better and better. Committee system on its death bed?

.. if you look at the forums there.. I don't think many people would look at it that way I think in many people's minds, "production" -> "critical staff"

Just want to point out that writing a cd and doing all the recording studio stuff isn't as expensive as making say an anime or tv show, at the time the 11 .99 purchase point was already netting the music industry substantial gains, which in turn led to more risks in shitty music, the fact that if it could be a hit in "main stream" then having a recording deal with an artist that had hit would be worth it, the intrinsic costs of making anime are way higher and in return the profit margins are more slim. So music is a different beast because of its entry point and the fact that its markup was probably far greater than its "worth" helped it survive. Also music piracy was never close to pc piracy, because again most music during the time of napster was shovelware... just mind you this was when backstreetboys and nsync were popular.

ok, ANN man they piss me off, not only do they seem to value liscencing companies over production companies but the whole forum is one way, and really I don't think of it as a true forum just from all the stifled thinking there. Anyway, the American model works because the shows that air are already payed for in full and dvd sales become a big bonus/profit which makes pirating more of a detriment because when the industry sees their pure profits go down the drain its more of a "loss" also american series don't have merchandising arms like anime. Anyway the model would work for anime if american/western liscensing were seen as extra icing or not critical for production but for some shows its actually part of the budget. Again I've state my opinion of the liscencing companies and really feel that the sooner they get axed from the anime distribution system teh sooner we approach more streamlined delivery of anime. This is more so with films where with the advent of the internet, the global has become more connected then ever and the idea of information being restricted by region becomes more and more backward... and I say to the entire industry, wake up and smell the napalm, if you don't you'll get burned.